


can we start the fall?

by bramgreenfeld



Category: SKAM Austin
Genre: F/F, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Pre Season 3, american even is there for a split second, character study I guess, me projecting on characters i love and relate to? it's more likely than you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 15:44:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18995647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramgreenfeld/pseuds/bramgreenfeld
Summary: The summer before Shay's senior year is familiar and unfamiliar and everything and nothing all at once.





	can we start the fall?

**Author's Note:**

> hi i love shay dixon so much and season 3 is going to be the best thing to happen to the scu (skam cinematic universe)  
> (title from molecules by hayley kiyoko)  
> (find me on tumblr @florenzidavid)

Summer had never seemed quite real to her. It was nothing but an interlude, a hazy in-between period, a sort of purgatory between two levels of hell. It wasn’t heaven, not exactly. But it was better than anything else. It was better than the school year, with her parents constantly on her and in her thoughts about her grades, about how she was wasting her life by devoting it to something she actually loved. For these three months, she was untethered. Shay couldn’t figure out whether she enjoyed the feeling or not.

She spent most days at Tyler’s with him and Marlon. The air conditioning was cranked up so high that she wondered if it might break, and the windows were open as wide as they could go despite the wind hardly blowing, if it was blowing at all. Tyler was unironically wearing jorts, and he had a spray bottle which he would shoot Marlon with whenever he was being douchey - this, of course, always led to water fights that they would rope her into. It was Austin. It was summer. It was home. It was just the way it always was.

_ Except that Megan’s not here,  _ a voice whispered, somewhere deep inside her. She suppressed it, shoved it deep down and squished it into a tiny ball, but the sensation was always there.

She left Tyler’s place around sunset one night, but didn’t go straight home like she usually did. The sky was streaked in shades of deep purple and pale pink and hazy orange and the temperature had gone down enough for it to be almost nice outside. She felt trapped. She had to be outside for at least a few more minutes before going back to her house, before being suppressed by the expectations that waited for her there.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been walking before she came across a place that she recognized. She’d only been there once, but once was enough - of course she remembered the party, the brief confrontation with Tyler, the way that Megan had drifted over to Marlon and not let go. Of course she remembered Eve.

Eve was on the front porch now, Grace with her, taking advantage of the okay weather. She wouldn’t be able to see Shay unless she tilted her head at just the right angle, and so she stopped in her tracks, not listening, just staring.

Eve was trying to flirt with her at the party last month. It was obvious. Shay would be lying if she said that she wasn’t intrigued by her - but it wasn’t  _ her _ exactly. It was everything that she was, everything that she symbolized. When people thought of a lesbian, they thought of someone like Eve - loud white girls who wore their identities and their hearts on their sleeves. Pride wasn’t difficult for them, it just came naturally, as if they were born with it. Shay supposed that she should’ve been, but it had never been like that for her. She knew that she liked girls, she must have always known. But felt like she wasn’t doing it right. On Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, there were all those inspirational posts saying that there was no right or wrong way to be a lesbian. But that didn’t explain why Shay always felt so wrong when she thought about liking girls.

She had never been able to bring herself to call herself a lesbian. Every time she tried, every instance where her parents had said the word in scathing, biting tones, every moment when she had overheard girls gossiping and laughing about it in the hallway, came spiraling to the forefront of her mind, and her stomach would twist. And so she called herself nothing. And so she was nothing.

Sometimes she felt like a puzzle piece trying to fit into the wrong place. All she wanted was to figure out where the hell she was supposed to belong. She didn’t know why it was so damn impossible.

She looked at Eve for a moment more and then turned on her heel, walking back the way she came.

Every year, she and Tyler and Marlon made fun of the Fourth of July, but it was Texas, and so they couldn’t help but celebrate. They set off fireworks in the backyard, Ty narrowly avoiding singing his hair off and acting pissed for the rest of the night while Shay and Marlon laughed at him. Marlon deep-throated a hot dog and still managed to be the straightest person that Shay had ever met. Life was good. It was always good when she was with them.

By the time the ‘party’ died down it was nearly midnight, and so she and Marlon just stayed over at Tyler’s, sleeping over like they had when they were kids. Tyler’s moms always made Marlon sleep in the guest room, which Shay had never really understood - Tyler’s taste in guys might not be the greatest, but it was Marlon, for fuck’s sake, and even if they thought that Shay was straight, it wasn’t as if she was going to hook up with  _ him _ . And so just like always it was just Tyler and Shay that night. People were still celebrating outside, and every so often another firework would go off somewhere, echoing through the streets and lighting up the night. Tyler was turned away from her, his face buried in his pillow, and so Shay almost thought she was dreaming when she heard him speak.

“Shay?”

She was nearly asleep. She lifted her head up off of the pillow, looking over at him. “What’s up?”

“I think I might have depression. Like, for real.”

Shay waited for him to speak again, but he had gone silent. She wasn’t sure if he was even breathing. “Okay,” she said finally. “Do you want to talk about it, or…?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not yet. I just...I wanted you to know.”

“Okay,” Shay said again. She reached out and grabbed Tyler’s hand, squeezing it once lightly. “I love you,” she said quietly.

“Love you too,” Tyler said. She still couldn’t see his expression, but it sounded like he might have been smiling. Just a little.

She ended up alone sometime deep into July. Tyler was visiting family in Houston, and she didn’t know where the hell Marlon had gone, but for those few days, it was just Shay and Shay alone. She found herself at a small coffee shop somewhere in the city just to get away from it all. She was attempting to write some new lyrics, but her thoughts kept on getting jumbled up, and it was impossible to focus. She looked up, irritated, and found herself staring directly at Megan Flores.

She wasn’t by herself, of course - Megan never was anymore. She always had someone with her, Grace or Penetrator Jo or even fucking Marlon. Today it was the whole squad, Megan and Grace and Kelsey and Jo and Zoya. Shay’s heart was beating so quickly that she thought that the whole city might be able to hear it. Before she knew it, she was standing up and walking towards the door. 

She stood outside for a moment, looking out at the place in the horizon where the blue met the distant skyline. She glanced behind her, looking at the girls one last time. She wasn’t sure whether she was surprised or not that Zoya was looking back at her. Zoya smiled, and Shay turned away, walking down the sidewalk without a clear idea of where she was going, as long as it was away from them.

_ There you go, running away again,  _ she told herself.  _ You can never face anything head-on, not with other people, not even with yourself. You always just back away from it. Learn to be brave for once in your life. _

_ Damn, we could make a great song out of that,  _ she thought. 

September came too quickly. The temperature had barely gone down, the sun hardly decreasing in its intensity, before senior year began. She pushed through the crowds of students in the courtyard, trying desperately not to look at Megan and to figure out where the hell Ty and Mar went.  She had AirPods in, blasting some song that she wasn’t paying enough attention to for it to be worth it. Her head felt strangely light - it had been a few days since she had cut her hair, but she still hadn’t managed to get used to it.

She stopped where she stood and looked up. There was a girl standing on the other side of the courtyard - she could barely be seen through the thick crowds, but she was there, Shay was sure of it.

Their eyes met, and for what felt like the first time in years, everything seemed to click into place.


End file.
